Looking for a speaker for an event on social innovation or shared spaces? Trying to rev up a crowd, secure buy-in, or build skills and capacity among your team?
The Centre for Social Innovation has been speaking at events around the world since 2006. Here’s a list of the topics we’ve addressed in the past – for more information or to discuss a tailored presentation, send us a note at speaking@socialinnovation.ca.
If you're looking for tailored consulting, click here.
Trends in Social Innovation
What does social innovation look like? What are the key drivers that are leading social change? And how can we leverage these trends? This presentation provides a framework for understanding social innovation while exploring emerging trends in the field, including the hybridization of the marketplace, web-inspired transformations, and the ongoing quest for happiness.
Creating the conditions for social innovation emergence
Where does social innovation come from? Is it truly as magical as it seems – does it just ‘appear’ out of thin air? While there is no recipe for social innovation, we can do far more than simply sit back and wait. Conscious attention to our spaces and our communities can create the conditions from which social innovation emerges. In this session, we’ll explore the intentional ~ organic paradox and offer tips for intentionally creating the conditions for organic social innovation emergence.
Shared spaces for social innovation
Not all shared spaces are created the same. There are fundamental differences between shared spaces to support social innovation and others created simply to provide a place to work. What turns a workspace into a community? What features animate and activate that community, leading to collaboration, idea exchange, and the emergence of new ideas? In this session, we’ll share our thinking on how shared spaces can become hotbeds of innovation, offering practical tips and a clear framework for understanding your work.
Constellation Model
The Constellation Model is a lightweight governance structure influenced by complexity theory and grounded in the real life practices of social change organizations. Originally created for the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment, the Constellation Model has since powered groups working on issues from literacy to youth engagement, proving its mettle and adapting its own logic to the circumstances in which it’s applied. In this session, we’ll review the basics of the model, offer ideas on how to adapt it to your situation, and empower you to get started immediately.
Click here for more on the Constellation Model.
Building effective shared spaces
In this session, CSI reveals its best secrets – and its worst failures – in an effort to help improve the success and impact of your shared space. Drawing on six years of experience, we’ll offer practical tips and strategies that will help ensure viability from start-up to scale. The session covers the full gamut, from deal structure and site selection to marketing, programming and community animation.
Network evaluation and growth
Many of us are investing heavily in network development as a strategy for changing the world. We feel intuitively that it is working – after all, collaboration is good, right? But how do we really know if it’s working? How do we, track, defend, rationalize or prove that a network approach is the right approach for our project? And perhaps most importantly, how can we learn to do it better? Based on the publication Network Evaluation: Cultivating Health Networks for Social Change, this session reveals the findings of the Centre’s research \ and offers tools and insights for improving network assessment and growth.
Our fees range from $1,000 to $5,000 depending on location and speaker requested.
Executive Director
- Creating the conditions for social innovation emergence
- Shared spaces for social innovation
- Trends in Social Innovation
- Constellation Model
Tonya Surman is the founding executive director of the Centre for Social Innovation. CSI was awarded the ‘City Innovation’ award from the Canadian Urban Institute in 2009 and Tonya was recognized as a ‘Leader in Social Change’ from the Canadian New Media Awards in 2009. In 2010, Tonya became a Global Ashoka Fellow for her work at CSI (www.socialinnovation.ca).
Previous to CSI, Tonya was the founding Partnership Director for the Canadian Partnership for Children's Health and Environment www.healthyenvironmentforkids.ca, whose work, in part, led to a new legislative framework to manage chemicals and the banning of Bisphenol A in baby bottles. Tonya has been creating and leading social ventures since 1987 and has built her body of knowledge around multi-sectoral collaboration and entrepreneurship for social change. She currently co-chairs the Ontario Nonprofit Network and the Social Enterprise Council of Canada.
Please contact info@socialinnovation.ca for info on Tonya's speaking fees.
Director Programs and Partnerships
- Creating the conditions for social innovation emergence
- Shared spaces for social innovation
- Building effective shared spaces
- Network evaluation
Eli Malinsky has been Program and Operations Director at the Centre for Social Innovation over the past five years. During his time at the Centre, Eli oversaw a five-fold increase in the Centre’s budget, a quadrupling of its footprint, and a ten-fold increase in its membership. Eli has helped secure over a quarter million dollars in financing for the Centre and has traveled the world to help others build shared spaces based on the Centre’s uniquely successful model.
Eli was previously the Coordinator of Imagine Canada’s Research Program, Canada’s pre-eminent research institute on the country’s nonprofit and voluntary sector. He holds a Graduate Degree in Communication and Cultural Studies, and has published research on the relationship between technology and organizational networks within civil society.
$1000 - $3000 for speaking engagements in Toronto; $1500 -$3000 for out-of-city speaking engagements